


The Chameleon Effect

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical violence towards animals, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Getting Together, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18976981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: It’s only been a couple of months since Brynjolf started travelling with the Dragonborn, and he’s already lost count of the number of people and monsters that have tried to kill them.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [echoslam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoslam/gifts).



> Thank you to FourCatProductions for betaing.

**The Chameleon Effect**

One

i

In hindsight, perhaps Brynjolf should have taken it as a warning when they were attacked by a band of trolls scarcely two days’ journey out of Riften. Even Fennec had commented, with an arch glance at him as she worked an ebony arrow free from a hulking corpse, that she’d never seen quite so many trolls in one place before. Brynjolf suspected she was lying.

Not long after the trolls, they were ambushed by vampires. By that point he’d started to get the picture.

First Seed and East March, and it was the Dark Brotherhood, who struck while Brynjolf and Fennec were making their way north through the hot springs towards Windhelm. Two of the bastards, and they picked their moment well, striking at twilight when Brynjolf was taking a piss and Fen was soaking the salted spadetail for the soup.

The Lady of Shadows was smiling on him that day: it was pure luck that he glanced up, distracted by the shaggy bulk of a mammoth on the horizon, and spotted the flicker of moment in his peripheral vision.

He felt a barely perceptible _thrum_ in the air, the whisper of a blade being drawn from a scabbard that didn’t exist on Nirn, and a responding tug at his guts that he recognised instinctively as very, _very_ bad news.

The blade was a vicious hooked thing, clutched in the assassin’s off-hand and barbed like a bee’s stinger, and it spat out colours like the northern sky, ripples of scarlet and bloodied ink and indigo. Fuck knew where the assassin had learned to do that nasty little trick. It made his teeth itch and the space behind his eyes throb, and it was coming at him in a fast little underhand jab that he only just managed to block with his forearm. Quick enough to prevent it from gutting him, but not quick enough to divert the blow completely. The blade scored his side and scraped his ribs, a shallow, searing gash that burned with an unnatural cold.

His attacker’s armour was the washed-out black of faded ink that made the patches of red-dyed leather shine all the brighter, as if stained bright with the blood of all the assassin’s previous victims. The face was completely concealed beneath a masked cowl, and Brynjolf’s skin crawled at the notion that there could be anything under that cowl, anything or nothing at all, a featureless stretch of skin, with no eyes, no mouth, no features, just a blank oval of flesh.

But it lent him strength, that repulsed horror, enough strength to grip the assassin, and drive his forehead into where he judged the bridge of the nose ought to be, assuming, of course, that the murderous bastard even _had_ a nose. He was rewarded with a satisfying crunch and then the assassin started wailing, so he guessed, made giddy by the adrenaline slipstream of fighting unexpectedly for his life, that there _was_ a nose under there somewhere. Good to know.

He followed up the head butt with a fist driven into the assassin’s gut, and felt the waves of cold rippling off that elsewhere-blade as he buried his own dagger between the assassin’s ribs. The assassin jolted with a startled exhalation of breath, then he crumpled against Brynjolf, clinging to him like a frightened child in the instant before life slipped away.

Brynjolf pulled his dagger free, letting the body drop. He scrambled down the rocks to where he last saw Fennec.

To his relief, she was still alive, holding the head of a bucking, struggling assassin beneath the surface of the steaming sulphur-rich water, one knee wedged between his shoulder blades. She was breathing hard, her ragged hair a sweaty tangled mess. The assassin’s dagger had come close to finding its mark, opening up a gash on her cheek that was going to make an impressive scar. As Brynjolf dropped onto the blood-smeared rocks beside her, the assassin gave one last convulsive shudder and went still, the last of his air bubbling up.

For a moment, Fennec didn’t move, her eyes unreadable as she took in Brynjolf’s dishevelled appearance. Then she shoved herself away from the corpse and let him haul her to her feet. Her hands and forearms had turned lobster-pink where they’d been submerged in the water.

“The Dark Brotherhood, too, lass?” he said. “Someone _really_ doesn’t like you.”

She cast a glance up at him through her ragged hair, a wry twist of her lips that wasn’t exactly a smile. “Bet you’re wishing you stayed in Riften now.”

“Somebody has to keep an eye on you.”

She kicked the corpse, scowling. “Well, that’s impeccable work you’re doing there, Bryn. I’ve never felt so safe and secure in all my life. Truly. Not since I was a babby.”

“Hey now, it’s not my fault you make enemies almost as fast as you make coin.”

She grimaced in acknowledgement, then hunkered down and hauled the assassin’s corpse from the water. “Speaking of enemies, who do you reckon sent this black-hearted bastard? Could it have been Mercer, before… y’know.”

“It could have been, but I doubt it. Mercer never much liked calling on the services of the Brotherhood.” He hesitated, and her gaze flitted up towards him. He tried to keep his voice still and even, and for the most part he did a decent job. “He would have done his own dirty work.”

She grimaced and brushed her hand against her throat, the scar had Mercer left on her skin when he cut her throat and left her for dead. “And don’t I know it,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “Yet another bastard who should have left well enough alone.”

There was nothing on either of the assassins’ corpses to suggest who had sent them or why. And considering just how many people seemed to want Brynjolf’s friend, guildmaster, and fellow Nightingale dead, there was no way to be sure.

But he could make an educated guess.

 

ii

 

Fennec didn’t play well with authority figures. He’d known that right from the start, right from that very first chilly afternoon in Riften. It was one of the reasons he’d approached her in the marketplace in the first place, something about the way she moved, the way she watched the guards with idle curiosity and contempt. Back then, he’d had no misgivings. He damned well did now.

Most of his misgivings involved the gleam in her eyes whenever she was talking to Maven, how she seemed forever on the edge of saying something that’d land them all in the shit. After Mercer’s death, she’d claimed Riftweald Manor as victor’s spoils, turfed out the mercenaries and moved in before anyone realised what was happening. It was there she’d met with Maven, and it was a wonder the whole bloody mess hadn’t ended in an all-out war.

Brynjolf had an instinct for trouble, and he knew there was no way this was going to end any way but badly.

He should have seen it coming. All the jobs she’d done for him, almost, but not quite, right. The ring she’d planted on Brynjolf himself instead of on Brand-Shei, simultaneously proving her skills while screwing up the job up very, very badly indeed. The mess at Honningbrew Meadery, when she’d soothed a madman in the tunnels with a Charm scroll after killing all his skeevers, only for the lunatic to come a hair’s breadth from gutting Mallus Maccius a few days later.

There was an art to that level of deliberate incompetence. It was impossible not to develop a sort of grudging respect for any thief with that much disrespect for authority, even when that authority was meant to be him, but it hadn’t made her popular.

Especially amongst the newer thieves who’d never known the glory days of the guild, and who maybe couldn’t give two shits about the guild’s prospects so long as _their_ pockets were lined. Whatever else Mercer might have been, he’d always been generous, even if the money he was so free with had been stolen from the guild’s coffers.

Word was that Maven Black-Briar was furious about Mercer’s disappearance and unimpressed that the guild’s new master wasn’t quite as willing to dance to her tune, although Brynjolf guessed Maven would have regretted taking Mercer as an ally in the long run. He knew how deeply Mercer had loathed her.

Perhaps matters would have been simpler if he felt he could trust Fennec, but unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, since trustworthiness was rarely a valued quality in a thief – he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her.

There’d been a moment back in Irkngthand when he’d suspected she might have been tempted to throw her lot in with Mercer. More than a moment, in fact. While he’d been locked in combat with Karliah, the part of him that was unaffected by Mercer’s sorcery was convinced that the Dragonborn would inevitably turn on them both. Something in the way her eye had gleamed when Karliah had talked about the Skeleton Key.

“The three of us could keep it,” Fen had suggested, and although she sounded like she was joking, it was pretty clear that she wasn’t. It was also clear, that when she said the three of them, she really meant herself.

She’d certainly been non-committal on the subject of when she was planning to return the Skeleton Key to the Sepulcher. A long way to Falkreath, she said, with a shrug. She’d get round to it, she said, and in the meantime he strongly suspected she’d been making use of the artefact. She had returned it eventually, as far as he knew, but his lingering doubts about the extent of her devotion to Nocturnal remained.

Not that he was any better. At the time, swearing his soul away had seemed like the only option, the pragmatic option, but on the nights when he woke from choking dreams of shadows and flocking carrion birds, he wondered.

 

iii

 

In Rain’s Hand it was a Thalmor patrol, east of Markarth. They were frostily civil when Fennec hailed them, her voice singing out bright and cheery in a way that Brynjolf had come to learn meant trouble. And to give them their credit, the elves remained civil, even while Fen pushed and pushed and pushed, her faux-cheer veneer quickly wearing off. Brynjolf knew very well that, Dragonborn or not, she didn’t give two shits about _any_ of the Divines, but she’d all but announced her devotion to Talos in order to goad the exasperated Thalmor into attacking them.

And that time it was _close._

The mage had summoned a frost atronach, the hulking construct of solid ice freezing the very air he breathed, so that for days afterwards his lungs burned every time he took a breath, and his hand had frozen to the hilt of his sword, leaving behind a layer of skin when he tore it away.

Even so, he wasn’t sure he could blame her. Getting information out of Fennec might be harder than prising coin from the purse of a priest of Zenithar, but he knew she’d been in Cyrodiil during the war. Too young to join the Legion, but old enough to fight.

In an unguarded moment in the Flagon one night, back when Mercer had been alive and for all anyone knew she was nothing more than an unproven footpad passing through, she’d let slip she’d been in Anvil when the city burned. The fire was so hot, she’d said, her eyes distant and dreamy, that the city’s famous grey stone had melted and the water in the harbour had set afire, turning the Abecean Sea into an ocean of blue flame.

Brynjolf, who had spent most of the war safely ensconced in Riften, had felt a rare pang of guilt.

In Second Seed they had to flee Solitude after the Military Governor of Skyrim tried to have Fennec arrested and summarily executed. Turned out their paths had crossed before she’d come to Skyrim, but more than that she refused to say, muttering only that she was lucky the general hadn’t recognised her straight away in Helgen or he would have had her beheaded _first_.

And in Mid-Year it was a group of saffron-robed cultists in strange masks, all Dunmer to a man when Brynjolf had checked the bodies for loot. For once, there was no help on that front from Fennec, who stalked off the moment she was certain they were all dead and he was unhurt. He found her later in a clearing by a stream, the crystalline water tumbling down a series of small stepped waterfalls. A peaceful scene, or it would have been if the Dragonborn hadn’t been Shouting butterflies out of the air with a don’t-fucking-talk-to-me scowl.

He lounged against a tree with his arms folded, trying not to flinch every time the Shout came wrenching up out of her chest to shatter the quiet.

“Friends of yours, lass?” he said when he’d judged she’d collected more than enough alchemy ingredients to be getting on with and when the echoes of her last **FUS** had stopped echoing off the rocky slope. She stiffened and shot him a glare that would have been enough to bring a younger and more easily intimidated man to a stuttering, tongue-tied silence.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, and sank down onto the bank.

He sighed, and settled beside her. “At least tell me how many more people want you dead. That’s only fair, lass. If we’re going to be travelling together.”

She turned a taut smile on him, her eyes bitter and hooded. “Do you want a list, Bryn? ‘Cause that might take some time. There isn’t an arsehole in Skyrim who can’t resist the temptation of testing themselves against the Dragonborn.”

“Except for me.”

“Yeah. Except for you.” She kicked off her boot and her stocking and dangled her bare foot into the rushing brook. When she spoke again the bitterness in her voice had thickened. “You know,” she said, watching the water as it poured over her toes, “I rescued this guy in a cave once. A couple of hagravens had been holding him captive, and it wasn’t like they were fattening him up or anything. He was half-starved, naked as the day he was born, and begging me to rescue him. So I do. I pick the lock, and set him free, and he helps me kill the hags, although that does kind of stretch the definition of ‘help’. But then – get this, Bryn, get _this –_ the pissing fucker turns on me. On _me_. Dressed in fucking dragonscale armour that I forged from dragons I killed _myself_. He’s seen me fight. Heard me Shout. Knows full-well that I’m armed with a bloody ebony sword, while he’s got this blunt-as-a-turd iron dagger that he’s been using to cut up the rancid dog meat the hags’ve been feeding him. How pissing thick do you have to be to see the Dragonborn and think, ‘Yeah, fuck it. I can probably take her. What’s the worst that could happen?’” She sighed. “I don’t often feel bad about killing people, not if they’ve tried to kill me first, but I felt bad about killing him.”

“I’m sure you would have saved him if you could have, lass.” Although he wasn’t sure. Not sure at all. “That dragonscale armour would have fetched a pretty price. A man could be set up for life with a single piece like that, if he was willing to live modestly. It’s business, nothing personal.”

“We’ve all been desperate at some time or another. That’s no excuse for rampant stupidity. Gods, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. All I’ve had since I got to Skyrim is people trying to kill me.”

“Funny you should mention that. I don’t think these orange-robed fellows were from Skyrim. I’d have heard of them already if they were. They were Dunmer, all of them, and their accents were strong. They’d not been in Skyrim long.” He watched her face when she looked away, searching for any sign of surprise. There was none.

“They’re from Solstheim,” she murmured.

“So you have run into them before. Aye, I thought as much. Any idea what they want?”

She shook her head. “But one of these days,” she said, and her voice was so cold and bleak and filled with promise it sent a shiver creeping down his spine, “I’m going to find out.”

 

iv

 

And then, in Last Seed, there was the dragon. He’d glimpsed them before, but only ever at a distance. A life spent mostly underground in the sewers had a few advantages, and shelter from massive flying fire- and ice-breathing reptiles happened to be one of them.

They were travelling east through Falkreath Hold, on a cart rumbling along a path that wound along the side of a hill, bordered on both sides by thick pine forest. There’d been a heavy burst of summer rain, short-lived but torrential, and the air was still humid, the scent of damp earth rising from the forest floor.

The cart driver sang tunelessly under his breath, the grinding of the wheels only marginally less musical than his voice. Fennec sat on the floor of the cart, a battered copy of _Glories and Laments_ resting on a bent knee, the other leg tucked beneath her. The forest was quiet. Peaceful, Brynjolf would have said. Except...

A noise. A breeze seemed to rustle the pine trees, and a pitter-patter of raindrops showered down, but there _was_ no wind. The air was still.

The horse shied. And through the trees, Brynjolf had the sense of something large passing overhead.

Fennec lifted her head, stared upwards with narrowed eyes at what little patch of sky they could see through the canopy. The cart driver muttered softly under his breath to the horse, then started to whistle. If anything, his whistling was even worse than his singing voice. Brynjolf hadn’t thought that possible.

Another barely perceptible _whoosh_.

"Stop the cart," Fen said, rising into a crouch and reaching for her bow.

The driver glanced back at her, scowling. “Do your business over the side if you’re that desperate, Imperial. No one’s gonna look–”

“Do as she says,” Brynjolf snapped. Before the cart had ground to a halt, she’d already leapt out, landing in the stony road, grit crunching beneath her boots. She listened, and Brynjolf did the same, holding his breath, thanking the gods that at least the cart driver had gone quiet for the moment.

He should have known _that_ couldn’t last.

"Ain't got all damn day–" The cart driver broke off as Brynjolf swung on him with fury in his eyes.

Fennec turned her head towards the tree-lined slope, and an instant later came the sound of something vast crashing through the trees, somewhere to the left, higher up the slope. Fennec readied her flame-enchanted ebony bow, notching an arrow.

But it wasn’t from the left that the dragon came.

Instead it crashed through the trees directly above them and snatched up the horse. Brynjolf had started to his feet, and was about to leap out to join Fennec when the cart lurched beneath him, wheels leaving the stones of the road. He fell, landing hard.

Winded, he lay on his back, saw the dragon beating its wings in an abortive attempt to get air-born, the horse gripped in its claws. The cart dangled beneath, wheels spinning.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away. Its hide was the colour of smoke, glimmering with a faint pearlescence like the enamelling of a seashell. Beautiful, really, even despite the reptilian reek that threatening to overwhelm him with every beat of its wings.

A tether snapped.

He felt it in a clench of his gut, saw the instant the dragon lurched suddenly upwards with its prize. Leather straps unravelled. And the cart, almost directly overhead, came crashing down.

He rolled into a ball as the cart smashed into splinters. Somewhere Fennec was screaming.

_Still alive._

He uncurled, gaze running over the remains of the cart, and what was left of the cart driver. Fennec was scrambling to her feet, spitting and swearing, the two halves of her broken blow gripped in her hands. “Shitshit _shit_ –” And then she was looking up, looking past him, staring upwards, and if there was an expression Brynjolf hoped he’d never see again it was the one she wore at that moment. He felt a wave of hot air beat and break against the back of his neck, smelled the reek of the dragon, and Fen was hauling on him before he could glance back.

She gave him a shove, yelling, "Go, go, go, you damned bloody fool," at him. As if he needed to be told twice.

They scrambled down the slope, searching for shelter in the depths of the pine forest. Ahead, Brynjolf spotted a rocky outcrop beneath which they could take shelter until the dragon moved on–

The horse crashed through the trees up the slope, its body striking the ground with a wet meaty thud and rolling towards them. It caught on a tree trunk, bent unnaturally, legs askew, and then they were both staring up through the rent in the canopy, at the dragon. There was a moment of stopped breath, an instant of silence, and Brynjolf would later remember praying that moment would never end, because when it did–

The dragon Shouted.

**FO KRAH DIIN**

A stream of marrow-freezing ice-crystals streamed down, enveloping Fen before Brynjolf recovered his senses enough to haul her bodily away, his throat and eyes burning. A sob caught in her chest, and she fell against him, let him drag her on. He pulled her to the rocks, shoved her beneath them and followed, wriggling down into the damp earth, hidden from view. Overhead he heard the beat of the dragon’s wings as it circled overhead, before moving on.

Fennec's breath was coming fast, and she’d thrown her hands up to cover her face.

"Let me see," he told her, and she didn’t seem to register his voice, her eyes glazed and fixed on a spot over his shoulder, the shadows gathering between the pine trees. He rifled through her pack, marvelling at the clutter and crap she’d managed to accumulate – necklaces with varying enchantments all tangled together, numerous tarnished rings, a pair of ancient rusting calipers that she claimed reminded her of home – and pulled out one of her healing potions, the bottle relabelled countless times in her barely legible scrawl. He uncorked it with his teeth, and put it to her mouth, swore under his breath as the viscous liquid seeped out with the consistency of treacle. Fennec was fighting him, choking and spluttering as the first of the potion hit the back of her throat and triggered the gag reflex. Her teeth ground against the neck of the glass bottle.

“Damn it, don’t fight me,” he muttered, using his body weight to pin her down, to stop her from wrenching her head away and spitting out the potion. When it was empty he threw the bottle aside and gripped her jaw shut, feeling her body shake beneath him as she juddered with spasms so violent he was certain she was dying, that she’d survived Mercer’s plotting and Alduin and the Thalmor, and for what? So that she could die of cold in the relative heat of a Skyrim summer?

The spasms stopped, or at least grew less violent, slowing until she was shivering beneath him. He waited until he heard her voice by his ear, a soft little murmur. “Bryn?”

He closed his eyes, exhaled in relief. “Yes, lass?”

“Get the fuck off me.”

He gave a short hard laugh and eased away from her, ducking his head to avoid knocking it against the rock. She looked like she’d had a bad sunburn. Her skin was starting to flake, and the flesh beneath looked shiny and raw and painful, but otherwise she seemed to have no permanent damage. He watched her carefully as she sat up, her every movement careful and slow.

“That,” she said, “was close.”

“Any closer and I’d have had the unenviable task of finding a new guildmaster.”

“Well...” She glanced out from underneath the outcrop and made a cautious survey of the sky. It seemed clear. For the moment. “Don’t give up hope. The day’s still young.”

“Aye. Plenty of time to get yourself killed yet.” He squeezed past her and offered her his hand. “Maybe we’ll find some frostbite spiders. Or a Thalmor patrol or two.”

“Not Thalmor. Not in this part of Skyrim we won’t. Nothing in Falkreath of note except for the dead. And the not-quite-dead-yet-thank-you-very-much-for-asking.” She nudged him. “Your first dragon fucked you up the arse, Bryn. Metaphorically speaking. Was it what you were expecting?”

“I wasn’t expecting a dragon at all.” _Or the orange-robed cultists. Or the Dark Brotherhood. Or the vampires. Or… well, everything._ “I suppose I might have hoped the tales about dragons sleeping on piles of gold and jewels were true.”

“The horde? It sort of is true.” And then, when his eyes brightened: “We’d have to find its perch though. And that usually means climbing a mountain.”

“Ah.”

“Exactly. Right now, even the walk to Falkreath seems like an insurmountable obstacle.”

“Don’t you have a house around here somewhere?” he asked.

“I have _land_ to build a house on, not an actual house.” She waved a hand vaguely in one direction. “It’s over that way. I think. Somewhere.”

Brynjolf rolled his eyes.

She glared at him. “ _What_? Do I look like the sort of person who’d be able to build my own fucking house? _And_ the bastards forgot to mention the land was lousy with bandits...” She slowed, trailing off, staring through the trees. Brynjolf stopped, following her gaze, concerned that the dragon might have come back.

“What is it?” And then, when she didn’t answer him, he took her arm. “Lass...”

“Don’t you see it?”

His first thought, born of bitter experience, was that it was someone else who was trying to kill them, but all he could see was another patch of pine forest, perhaps a little darker and gloomier and more overgrown. Fennec seemed unconcerned, curious rather than tense.

He followed her as she hopped over a burbling spring that bubbled up out of the ground, moving towards what he had taken for a rock formation, a looming jagged shape wreathed with foliage and brambles. A fringe of dark sludgy green ferns ringed the base, tangling with thick brambles the colour of dried blood. Beneath the brambles and ivy the surface of the shape was darker than the stones commonly found in these parts, almost as dark as ebony.

Some artefact of the ancient Nords, he thought, and then Fen was ripping at the brambles. The underside of the leaves were stained a dirty ochre, and he realised that the stone beneath was not stone at all, but metal. No rock formation this, but the centuries-old remains of an Oblivion gate, thrusting out of the tainted earth like a broken tooth. The instant he realised, Fen pierced her palm on a thorn and cried out in pain and surprise.

It was enough to bring Brynjolf to his senses. He gripped her shoulder and jerked her backwards more roughly than he meant to. “Leave it alone.” His voice sounded rough, uneven. “Nothing good can come of that thing.”

She didn’t seem to have heard him. Even manhandling her, which under normal circumstances would have earned him an elbow to the ribs at the very least, had drawn no reaction. She was staring at it as if captivated by the sight. “It’s the first one I’ve seen since I took the Pass north,” she said. “I thought there weren’t any left in Skyrim.”

Some hope. “There’s one or two still left here and there. Most were torn down in the years after the Crisis. What good could it do letting them stand?”

She pulled away from him and circled it, kicking at the ferns. No wonder the foliage looked so unnatural, Brynjolf thought. Tainted, by whatever seeds and spores the daedra stamped into the ground when they flooded through from Oblivion.

“Alchemy ingredients for one,” she said. “Bloodgrass doesn’t grow on Nirn, except around what’s left of a gate.” She frowned. “And there are other reasons.”

“Like?”

“Remembrance. In Cyrodiil we mostly let them stand as monuments–”

“Aye, that’s Imperials for you. More money than sense.”

“–And not just for the dead. We seem to have a way of forgetting, Bryn, how dangerous Oblivion is.” There was a strange cast to her words, a meaning he couldn’t be entirely certain of. She’d stopped with her back to him, so he couldn’t see her expression, but he didn’t like how close she stood to the thing, her hand hovering over the rusting surface of the metal.

Unnatural stuff. Beneath the muck, there was an oily shine to the thing. It might tarnish, but it’d never truly rust away to nothing. This thing, rusted and decaying though it might seem at first glance, was as impervious as gold. It’d stand forever, he thought, if it was left alone. When the egg cracked, and the kalpa came to an end, it’d still be here, waiting.

He shivered, feeling the same tugging sensation he’d felt in his gut when the assassin summoned the bound dagger. He’d felt it before, tasted that same metallic taste on his tongue, the skin-crawling wrongness of Oblivion like the promise of an oncoming storm. He’d felt it in the ceremonial chamber of Nightingale Hall, when he’d bargained his soul away. And then the moment had passed, and she was turning towards him, an eyebrow raised.

“After all,” she was saying, “it’s almost always a mistake to consort with daedra.”

Which was the way his own thoughts had been turning lately, but he hid his unease. “Other than drinking contests with strange Bretons?”

She glowered at him. “I thought I told you I didn’t want to talk about that. Besides if anything it proves my point.”

“Come away from it, Fennec.”

She nodded, stepping away, but she kept glancing back at it as they moved away through the forest. He wondered if they were the first to stumble across it, and how many people had drunk from the water of that stream without realising that it was tainted. He couldn’t shake his unease, even after the accursed thing was lost between the trees, but Fen seemed oddly settled and composed, as if she’d somehow found the sight a comfort.

As if she sensed the turn his thoughts are taking, she gave him a sideways glance through her hair, and said, “I was born in Ione.”

She spoke quietly, softly, as if this fragment of her past were an offering, a gift held out in outstretched hands that she half-expected him to reject. For the first time since he’d known her, she almost sounded shy. Brynjolf might have wished the circumstances were different, but he was oddly touched.

“Aye, I’ve heard of the place,” he said.

Two hundred years ago the Oblivion Crisis had destroyed countless isolated villages and settlements across Tamriel, the ones with no way to protect themselves when gates opened up in the wilderness. But it had created settlements too, new homes for the dispossessed.

Ione hadn’t existed until the gate opened up in an empty patch of wilderness, not far from the more established village of Pell’s Gate, but when the Crisis was over, the survivors with nowhere else to go stayed on, and, for reasons Brynjolf didn’t quite understand, they’d let the remains of the Oblivion Gate stand in the town square.

Mercer had been partial to a brand of blackberry liquor made there, which was growing virtually impossible to get hold of these days. The town hadn’t fared well in the Great War, if ‘not faring well’ was an accurate term for having been razed to the ground. After Red Ring, virtually nothing had been left.

Except for the gate. He was willing to bet that was still standing.

“I’m truly sorry, lass.”

She leaned against him seeking comfort, and on instinct, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

“It is what it is,” she said, and there was a brittle hardness to her voice. Like badly tempered steel, she sounded like she’d shatter at the first blow.

“Will you ever go back to Cyrodiil?”

That sly sideways glance again. “Trying to get rid of me? You can’t be sick of your guildmaster already, Brynjolf.”

“If I was, all I’d need is patience. You can’t have that many years left in you. I’d just have to wait you out.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a fucking miracle I’m not dead yet.”

“So, _will_ you go back?”

By now he’d heard countless versions of her story. She’d already evaded the question once, and he wasn’t really expecting an answer, but he got one. Whether it was true or not was up for debate, but he suspected it was truer than most of the lies she’d told him.

“Maybe,” she said. “One day, I might.” She closed her eyes, dropped her head back. “When I feel like I have a chance to take a breath without someone trying to kill me. When I feel like there’s something waiting for me at home instead of memories of fire and blood and slaughter...”

“So never, then.”

“That’s about right,” she agreed. “But if you’d like a happier answer, what about, ‘When I’ve relieved every single rich arsehole in Skyrim of the burden of their gold’?”

“Now that’s the best answer yet.”

“And I can think of at least one rich arsehole cursed with an overabundant burden of coin.” Her eyes glittered and her arm twined around his. Her touch was still over-cool, chill from the dragon’s freezing breath, but he felt heat. “It’d be closer to home for you, as well. Right slap bang on top of it, in fact.”

Maven Black-Briar.

 _Let’s teach that bitch a lesson,_ her eyes said.

He opened his mouth to tell her ‘no’, to remind her how much Maven had done for the guild in the long years of slow decline, not to mention how much power she wielded, but instead he found himself hesitating. A memory flashed into his mind, of Mercer, drunk and in a rare expansive mood, enumerating in excruciating detail all the ways he’d like to make the Black-Briars suffer. Brynjolf had laughed so hard that night his cheeks had ached.

 _We could_ , he thought, and perhaps it was the strain of repeatedly coming close to death, but the possibility excited him. He thought of the wealth that had to lie within the Black-Briar’s manor, everything that cold-eyed bitch had built up with the help of the guild, and his palms started to itch with the promise of coin. More coin, most likely, than had passed through his hands in at least a decade. _Longer._

Fen was standing too close. He lifted his hand to her cheek to trace the scar left by the assassin’s knife, expecting her to pull away. Instead she leaned into his touch. And he found himself thinking about the first night they’d made camp after killing Mercer in Irkngthand, how he’d woken in the misty grey light of early dawn to find her missing. A big man he might be, but he could move silently enough when he wanted to. He’d found her a little way away from the campfire, quietly burying her black pennies in mourning for Mercer Frey.

And now here she was, with her cheek pressed to his palm. Strange that his thoughts should have gone to that memory of all places.

 _We could_ , he thought again, and it was no longer the prospect of robbing Maven Black-Briar blind that he had in mind.

If they’d had another moment or two, he might even have kissed her, but naturally _that_ was the moment the dragon picked to come back.

The big scaly bastard.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

  
I

  
One thing to be grateful for, Brynjolf supposed as he half-fell, half-scrambled down a slope, travelling with the Dragonborn was rarely dull. Not that he had much time to appreciate that in the handful of spare moments he had between people and monsters trying to kill him.

He froze, pressing himself back against the rocks as the sleek blue-silver belly of the dragon swept through the air in front of him, enveloping him in a sour reeking fug.

At least he wasn’t _bored._

In the valley below he could see the promise of shelter, a tumbledown log cabin, which looked long-abandoned.

It wasn’t, of course. It was nothing of the kind.

Inside a man in robes cringed away from Fen and Brynjolf as they burst through the door in a shower of ice crystals, the dragon swooping so low overhead the flimsy building shook. They’d been expecting to find the cabin empty, so were as startled as he was, and he was the one who recovered first, raising his staff.

Bryn felt a sudden scorching flare of heat on his cheeks as the end caught alight, flames rippling in snaking waves along the length of the staff. He threw himself backwards as the bolt of flame streaked towards them.

Fen had fallen to her knees when they’d thrown themselves through the doorway, so the Shout which tore itself up through her throat lacked power, but in such proximity was still enough to fling the man backwards into a table, scattering alchemy ingredients and glass bottles across the room. The cabin was filled with a sudden acrid reek.

The staff clattered across the uneven floorboards, coming to rest by the bed.

Fen gasped, trying to recover her breath. Brynjolf looked up, met the alchemist’s angry, terrified gaze, then saw that gaze drop to the staff. For a moment they were both frozen in place, motionless as mudcrabs lying in wait. Then they both scrambled for the staff.

The alchemist was closer, broken glass crunching beneath his knees as he threw himself full length towards the weapon. Brynjolf grabbed the hem of his robe and hauled, hearing the fabric tear. The alchemist kicked back at him, catching him in the chest and shoulder, and bought himself a couple of inches, enough for his alchemy-stained fingers to grasp the staff.

Panting with exhaustion and pain, he gave a yell of triumph. Then Brynjolf rose up, grabbed the alchemist’s hair and jerked him back, and the yell of triumph became a howl of pain.

“Yield, damn you,” Brynjolf bellowed. “Yield!”

Fen, pushing herself to her feet, gave a cry of warning.

The alchemist fumbled on the floor, snatched up the first thing he found – an alchemy bottle – and smashed it back and upwards, the glass shattering against Brynjolf’s jaw.

He felt the sting of broken glass biting into the tender skin. Then wetness running down his neck. Then a sudden aching chill that gripped his body.

His muscles seized fast, his fingers slackened, and he collapsed, stiff as a plank of wood.

Outside the dragon bellowed, and the cabin shook. The alchemist went still, body quivering, then made another desperate grab for the staff. Fennec leapt onto the bed, the frame creaking beneath her weight, and kicked him full in the face. As he fell backwards, Fen jumped off the bed to snatch up the staff.

Her foot plunged right through the rotted floorboards.

“Shit!”

The alchemist stared at her as she tried to wrench her way free, seeming hardly able to believe his luck, then he snatched up a chair and threw it at her. While she flinched, throwing up her hands to shield her face, he hurtled out through the door, tripping on the turn hem of his robe in his hurry to escape.

He barely got ten yards and skidded to a stop, his gaze turning upwards.

Brynjolf’s sight line was hampered, but he saw enough to see the dragon’s claws close around the alchemist’s frame, and the potion or poison or whatever it was hadn’t affected his hearing; he heard the steady beat of wings and the poor bastard screaming as he was snatched up and out of sight. Then a sort of horrible crunching sound he hoped he’d never hear again.

Then silence.

Fen’s raspy breathing and muttered curse broke that silence as she dragged her foot from the ragged hole in the boards. She staggered to the door and slammed it shut, slumped against it.

“Stupid bloody bastard,” she muttered.

He tried to say her name, his voice little more than a rasping croak, then he tried again, and this time it was a little stronger.

She looked up, her hand pushed into her hair. “Bryn?”

“Here.” He coughed. She was staring around the shack like she couldn’t see him, and he felt a rush of irritation. “I’m right here.” His muscles were stiff and aching, as he set his palms on the floor to push himself up–

He couldn’t see his hands. He could feel the rough grimy floorboards, the grain of the wood and the sticky layer of dust and grease, and he could even see the marks his hands left in that grime, but his hands themselves were completely transparent. “I think I’m invisible, lass.”

“Oh thank the _gods_ for that. I thought… Fuck, I don’t know what I thought. What in Oblivion did he hit you with?” She knelt on the floor beside him, carefully feeling for him.

“A side effect of a paralysis poison,” he said, forcing the words out through his stiff lips. “And a nasty one.”

“But not a very useful one,” she said, “since this side effect hasn’t worn off yet, but it seems the paralysis is already starting to. Very odd.”

She helped him onto the bed which was as least as grubby as the floor and no doubt infested with fleas and lice to boot. The frame creaked so fiercely he was sure it was about to collapse beneath his weight.

“It’s strange,” she said, running her gaze along the bed, the dip in the bed’s mattress where he was lying. “I’ve never seen an invisibility effect quite so perfect. You can usually see something, if you know what to look for, but I can’t see you at all.”

“How long until it wears off?” he asked, rolling his shoulders. They were loosening up, but still a little sore, although he couldn’t tell if that was from the poison or from the various batterings he’d taken over the course of the afternoon.

“Depends on the strength of the potion,” she said, “but–” She broke off at the sound of the dragon roaring. It sounded further away. “I think it’s moving on.”

“I hope you’re right.”

They waited. The light piercing the cracks in the door and the shuttered windows gradually began to darken with the onset of twilight.

After they’d been sitting in the gloom a while, with no sound but their own breathing and the occasional scream of a fox, Fennec lit a lantern and began to idly flick through the alchemist’s notebook.

Another age seemed to go by before Brynjolf said, “I don’t think it’s coming back.”

She licked a finger and turned a page, frowning at whatever she saw there. “Doesn’t look like it.”

He raised his hand and stared through it at the ceiling. Still invisible. “Any idea, lass, how much longer the effects of this poison will last?”

“It wasn’t a poison.”

“The paralysis–”

“A side effect.” She lifted the notebook. “One he was trying to get rid off, or at least mitigate. It was a potion, Bryn, not a poison. I think he grabbed the first bottle he could find, but...” She hesitated.

Bryn lifted his head. “But what? What is it, lass?”

“I don’t think this is a normal invisibility potion.” She lowered her chair back down. Her boots crunched in the broken glass as she stood and came towards the bed. When she reached out and laid her hand on his chest, Brynjolf held his breath. “Has the paralysis worn off?”

“I think so.”

“Completely?”

He rolled his shoulders. “Aye. I’m still a bit sore, but–”

“Good.” She slapped his chest. “Then hit me.”

“What?”

“You got cloth ears? Hit me.”

He laughed. “I’m not going to hit you.”

“What?” She bared her teeth at him. “You don’t think you can take me?”

“Oh, I can take you,” he said, rising to his feet. Her eyes flickered as she took in the shift In the mattress’s position, searching, he guessed, for the telltale shimmering movement in the air. She grinned even wider as she shifted her stance, put her left foot back, readied her fists. He felt a little light-headed at the experience of almost dying, giddy with having survived. “But I’m not in the habit of brawling with my guildmasters.”

“Come on, you must have been tempted once or twice. Not even with Mercer?”

“Fen–”

“In any case, Bryn, it’s an order.” She threw a light jab at him, hard enough to hurt when it collided with his arm. “ _Hit me_. Or, at the very least, try to stop me hitting y–”

He’d never know quite how much of it was a combination of his own skill in fighting, the edge lent by the invisibility effect, and Fen’s guard being deliberately down, but when she took another jab at him he was ready. He sidestepped, gripped her wrist and swung her around, pinning her against the wall with his body weight. She cried out, and tried to drive her elbow back into his gut, but he evaded her with ease and caught hold of her other wrist, pressing harder.

“Bastard,” she said, laughing.

“You said it was an order,” he reminded her. Her hair carried the mingled scents of fresh sweat and woodsmoke, pine and lavender. And he was starting to find that while he was pressed against the length of her the curves that were usually easy to ignore when hidden beneath leather armour and the loose linen shirts she favoured were now making themselves known. Quite emphatically so.

A fire ignited in his belly. He shifted his grip on her wrists and turned slightly to the side, so that at least she couldn’t feel his hardening cock nudging against her backside.

She turned her head, eyes glittering through her hair. It occurred to him then that she could Shout if she wanted to, use nothing more than her gods-given Voice to knock him across the room just as she had the poor sod of an alchemist.

He’d caught the very edge of a Shout before, in Irkngthand, when she’d sent a couple of poor benighted Falmer plunging to their deaths off a ledge. That had been enough to send him staggering and knock the breath from his lungs. If she struck him with the full force of it, at this distance he couldn’t see how that would do anything other than stop his heart and kill him outright.

She didn’t Shout. Instead she pulled at his grip on her wrists and wriggled around when he released her, so that she had her back against the wall, and he was pressed full length against her, his semi-erect cock hard against her thigh and his hands planted against the wall either side of her head.

“Well,” she said, her voice low and throaty, “this _is_ interesting.”

“Never a dull moment travelling with you, lass.” _Fuck it,_ he thought, and started to lower his head to her throat, making sure to give her plenty of time to protest, to demand to know what the fuck he thought he was doing, or to knee him in the testicles, which was probably his least favourite of those options, but he was ready and prepared to twist away if necessary.

She didn’t do any of those things. Instead she reached up, gripped a handful of his hair and pulled his head back so she could see his face. Or not.

“Not that,” she said, “Haven’t you realised yet?”

“I’m a wee bit distracted at the moment...”

“Bryn, you’re _still invisible_.”

He paused, taking a moment to take her words in. Then he turned his head to look at where his right hand was pressing against the wall. Even in the darkening gloom he could see she was right. “The effect should have been dispelled when I defended myself.”

She was grinning at him. “I told you it wasn’t a normal invisibility potion.” She let go of his hair and pushed lightly at his chest. He eased away with some reluctance.

“Even Nocturnal’s Shadowcloak isn’t this powerful.”

Fen rifled through the mess of alchemy ingredients, sifting through the shattered bottles and ingredients fresh and dried, uncorking the potions that had survived the struggle intact and sniffing warily at the contents. She lifted up a bundle of spindly roots bound together with twine.

“Dried bloodgrass. I guess we weren’t the first ones to find that gate.”

Carefully, he reached out, and took hold of the bloodgrass from Fen. His fingers brushed against hers, and she let go, watched in fascination as the bloodgrass vanished the moment it passed from her hand to his. It felt singularly unpleasant, like a stinging nettle against his palm, but he barely noticed. Instead, he was thinking about the possibilities.

There was no doubt Invisibility potions and spells were useful tools in the thieves’ arsenal, but they were limited in their power. Any attempt to interact with the world – to take up an item or pick a pocket – and the illusion was broken, leaving the thief at risk. But if the illusion never wavered, if a thief was able to move through the world unseen, interacting with it at will whilst remaining invisible…

Gods, he’d be invincible. He could stroll at leisure into any palace, any mansion of his choosing, steal anything that wasn’t nailed down right under the guards' noses, and there’d be nothing they could do.

“It’s a Chameleon potion,” Fennec was saying. “One of those old enchantments that went out of fashion, and got forgotten. Like Levitation, after it was banned.”

Which was fascinating, Brynjolf thought, but there was one pressing question: “Can you make more?”

In reply, she grinned. “I reckon I could give it a shot.”

“Shor’s beard. We could do anything with this, lass,” he said, so heady with the possibilities he almost felt drunk. “ _Anything_.”

“And we’ll put it to good use, Bryn, I promise you that. We’re going after Maven Black-Briar–” Despite his being invisible, she somehow knew to snap her hand up over his mouth when he opened it to protest. “No, don’t argue, my mind’s made up. Godsdamn, we’re the _Thieves’ Guild_. Since when do we cringe at the feet of people like her? Fuck that. It’s done, Bryn. Her cosy little arrangement with the guild is over and we’re going to wring her for every last clipped Septim she’s got.” She tapped his chest. “Guildmaster’s orders. It’ll be worth it.”

“You’ll make a lot of people very angry.”

Her voice hardened. “Then let them try their luck and make a move against me. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Aye, I know, but...”

“But what?”

He leaned close, felt the warmth of her against his body, noted inwardly the way her breath seemed to slow. “But what if there was a better target?”

She went silent for a moment, then softly said, “I’m listening.”

“Delvin Mallory’s been hearing some whispers from the Dark Brotherhood. One of their agents stopped by the Flagon a while back...”

She sucked a sharp breath in through her teeth. “You know how I feel about the guild having dealings with the Brotherhood.”

“This was business. Nothing more.”

“It’s _all_ business. And an assassin almost gutted you not that long ago.”

“I’m not the sort of man to hold a grudge.”

“Yeah, well, I do hold grudges. Lots of them. I have a never-ending list and the Brotherhood’s one of the names at the very top.” She sighed. “Go on.”

“It’s not just what I’ve heard from Delvin. I’ve been hearing some interesting rumours from my contacts in the Imperial City...”

“What sort of rumours?”

“Well, from what I’ve heard, our old goat of an Emperor might be coming to Skyrim after all.”

She frowned. “I thought he’d cancelled his visit.”

“Aye, well it seems that unfortunate and messy business at the Vici wedding in Solitude may have induced him to change his mind. I doubt the bride would find much consolation in that, poor girl.”

“Damn it, Bryn, when were you going to tell me this?”

“I couldn’t be sure the rumours were true, and if they are, well… The Brotherhood is mixed up in it somewhere, you can be certain of that.”

“Fuck the Brotherhood. The Emperor? The bloody _Emperor_?”

“It’d be a heist to remember. It certainly beats stealing from a bunch of ancient dead elves and their monstrous blind descendants.”

“Yeah, I’m sure what’s left of the Falmer really give a fuck about their statue’s missing eyes.” She gave a soft laugh. “Don’t think this means I’ve decided to let Maven off the hook, Bryn. I know she’s the one who set her Brotherhood dogs on me and I take exception to that, but–”

“But?”

“But it’d be something, wouldn’t it? To pull something like that off? Assuming we can pull it off.”

“It’d be glorious,” he agreed. “And you’re forgetting something, lass, not only are we thieves and Nightingales, we’d be _invisible_ thieves and Nightingales. Virtually invincible, assuming you can make another batch of potion. We can pull it off.”

“And if our luck turns like it did for Mercer?”

“Then let it turn.” It was addictive this feeling, the thrill of a challenging job. “Isn’t that half the fun?”

 

ii

 

It was bliss.

True to her word, Fennec was able to mix up another batch of the potion with what was left of the alchemist’s supplies. After the unfortunate paralysis wore off, the invisibility effects lasted for about three days, give or take, longer with the aid of certain enchanted pieces of jewellery the alchemist had had scattered about the shack.

For the first time since leaving Riften, Brynjolf was travelling in the company of the Dragonborn without something trying to slaughter them both every other step. Bears, dragons, spiders, trolls, the occasional antisocial necromancer, all ignored them as they passed through the world like phantoms.

They strolled right into the heart of a bandit camp, stole baked potatoes straight from the fire, picked the pocket of the bandit chief and emptied his chest of everything of value, and then strolled straight out again while the bandits muttered darkly about the wind.

 _Bliss_. Or it would have been if certain matters hadn’t been left unresolved between them since that night in the alchemist’s hut. With Fennec studying the alchemist’s notebooks and trying to refine the formula and Brynjolf busy getting in touch with his contacts in order to pin down the Emperor’s likely movements, not to mention stealing everything of value that wasn’t nailed down, it had never seemed like quite the right moment. Nor was Brynjolf confident about the best way to go about making his advances.

With any other woman it’d be easy – especially if she was a Nord. A subtle flash of an amulet of Mara, or a simplified version of Her intricate knot traced in the earth or on the back of a hand, or, failing all that in cases of the terminally oblivious, simply asking, “Interested in me, are you?” was usually sufficient.

But Fennec wasn’t a Nord. She was an Imperial, and the Dragonborn, and one of the strangest women he’d ever met. She was feckless and intransigent, loyal and treacherous, bitter and broken, and most of all dangerous. An amulet of Mara wouldn’t have any meaning for her, particularly when the amulet of Mara in question was one that had been looted off a bandit’s corpse. Brynjolf never had been one for romance, but even he could tell _that_ was a bit off.

As summer drew to its sweltering close, his frustration and indecision grew.

They were waiting in Falkreath Hold for word from one of Brynjolf’s contacts. It made him uneasy, this part of Skyrim, the way he’d stumble suddenly and without warning across an ancient grave, a reminder that there had been a time when this hadn’t been Skyrim at all, but part of Colovia, and every chance that those graves belonged to one of Fennec’s long-dead ancestors.

This close to the border, the Imperial influences were obvious. In the inns down here, they cooked with olive oil instead of butter, and served up mutton stew and spiced rice porridge. And it wasn’t just the food: the air itself seemed different. In the sweaty armpit of the dying days of Last Seed, it was possible to imagine that they’d stumbled over the border without realising and were now in Cyrodiil.

Fennec kept quiet, but he suspected she was dreaming of home.

Well. None of his business. As far as he was concerned, they were both too old to get homesick.

His thoughts kept returning to her as he bathed in Lake Ilinalta, working up a lather with a sliver of gritty soap. He was invisible – it was addictive, that, and he was beginning to see why this Chameleon effect might have gone out of fashion; it was all too easy to grow reliant on it – and it must have been a curious thing for a passer-by to see, the empty pits in the water where he stood, the sudden shower of water droplets shining in the sunlight when he sluiced himself off with lake water warmed by the morning’s sun.

He was scrubbing his fingers through his hair and into his scalp, working out the worst of the tangles, when at the edge of his awareness he felt the sense of being watched. He went still, aware suddenly of his pulse beating a little faster in his throat, of the water rippling around his thighs.

Nothing there.

He exhaled, shook his head at his own foolishness, and dunked his head beneath the water, rinsing out the meagre lather he’d managed to work up.

On edge. No doubt because he was feeling a little guilty, a rare thing for him.

He kept thinking of the sound of Fennec’s voice in the alchemist’s cabin, when she’d asked if he didn’t think he could take her. Not mocking exactly, but amused. Almost daring him to do something about it. And it wasn’t just her voice he kept remembering.

It was as if their time being invisible had brought the memories he had of her into sharp focus. All the brief flashes of her body he’d glimpsed in the time they’d been travelling together. She hadn’t flaunted herself, but she wasn’t endowed with an excess of modesty either, so he’d seen plenty: the dark juncture at her thighs; the underside of her breasts as she pulled her shirt over her head; the nub of bone at the nape of her neck as she combed out her hair; her skin shining with sweat and exertion as she sparred with Vipir in the training room...

That particular memory lingered, and his shaft thickened as he soaped it, cupping his balls with the other hand. She’d been dressed in a loose shirt darkened with sweat at the armpits and down the spine, her hair sticking to her forehead as Vipir leaned close to tell her something under his breath. The breathless way she’d laughed at whatever it was he’d said, something filthy no doubt, knowing Vipir. As she’d mopped her brow with a rag, her gaze had lifted to meet Brynjolf’s across the room.

Gods, he wanted her. Maybe he had back then too, even if he hadn’t realised it yet, hadn’t recognised the dark little stab of irritation he’d felt as she laughed at Vipir’s joke as jealousy.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on when he started wanting her, although he suspected it might have been somewhere in Irkngthand. Something about coming so close to death, after too long spent running scams in the relative safety of Riften. He had Fennec and Karliah to thank for ripping away that veneer of safety, and reminding him how exhilarating it could be to risk his life on the toss of a die. Fennec and Karliah, and before them, Mercer and Gallus. He’d almost forgotten it, the sheer unadulterated joy that those two men had taken in the life before it all went sour. It was contagious, that joy, and glorious, and still he’d _forgotten_.

The water rippled around the empty place where his thighs should have appeared. He slid his loosely clenched fist along the length of his shaft, the sensations all the stronger for being unseen. He imagined his hand as hers, pictured her dropping to her knees in the water before him, casting that almost mocking half-smile up at him as she drew back his foreskin and twisted her damp, sweat-slicked palm around the head of his cock with a movement of her wrist that sent a sharp stab of aching pleasure shooting through him.

He sucked a breath through his gritted teeth as he drew his hand back down to the base, slowly, _slowly_ , because gods he wanted to make this last–

And then Fen’s voice called from the bank, and she might as well have doused him with a bucket of ice-cold water.

“Please. Don’t stop on my account.”

He went still, thinking for an instant that the invisibility must have worn off, that he was in full view of the bank, and she had caught him wanking himself off while thinking about her.

 _Damn,_ he thought, _I should have waded deeper._ But a quick glance downwards confirmed he was still invisible. “You can see me, lass?”

“Kind of. In direct sunlight, at least. There’s the faintest of outlines.”

He released his erection, and risked a glance at the bank. He couldn't see a damned thing.

“Please tell me you haven’t used up _all_ the soap?” she said.

 _Soap_. She thought she’d caught him in the middle of bathing. He let out a breath, relief, mingled with a needling of regret. “You’re lucky. There’s just a sliver left. If you’d been any longer there might not even have been that.”

“You know, you’re more obsessive about keeping yourself clean than I’d expect from a man who lives in the sewers.”

She was already stripping off as he waded out and dropped the soap on the bank. All he could see was each article of clothing appearing as it was stripped off and dropped on the bank, a strangely arousing sight, given he couldn’t actually see her. He watched for the moment she waded into the lake, kicking up the water at the edge with a sharp intake of breath at the sudden chill. It looked as if chasms were being formed in the water at each stride, the water spilling back in as she moved on. The sunlight glittered on the water, sparkling as if she left diamonds in her wake. And she was right, he realised; he could see her – _just,_ and only when the light was right – a faint rippling in the air, like the heat of a fire making the air above it ripple and dance. An almighty splash rose up, and he knew she must have dived beneath the surface of the water, because he could no longer see the empty spaces where she stood, but only the ripples that marked her passing.

Reluctantly, he turned away and collapsed on the bank near his pile of clothes. The breeze was coming in from the north-west, carrying the juniper-scented warmth of the Reach, and he pillowed his head with his hand, enjoying the sound of the water, of the wind in the branches, the birdsong, the warmth of the sun on his skin, and most of all the brief respite from people trying to kill him.

He’d meant to let the sun dry him off and then dress again straight away, but instead, lulled by the soft peaceful sounds, he fell into a doze, distantly aware of the sound of someone cutting through water.

Something touched his foot.

Roused out of his half-dreaming doze, and with the gentle kiss of the breeze cooling his sun-warmed skin, he kept still as it drew along his instep. A finger, the touch feather-light. The skin on his arms prickled as the finger trailed up to the ankle bone of his bent leg. Only then did the touch deepen, still soft and careful and delicate, but much less ambiguous. Whoever it was wanted to be certain he knew they were there.

Fen. He could hear her breathing, slow and unhurried.

He opened his eyes, not that it made a damned bit of difference when his eyelids were transparent, but they did seem to blur the world and dampen the harsh glare of direct sunlight. With his eyes open everything came into sharp focus, the scudding clouds overhead, a bird arcing in the sky, the fat bees droning amongst the mountain flowers with the same unhurried laziness as the fingers circling his ankle bone.

He lifted his head, and saw nothing except the lake. The breeze had dropped and the surface was as smooth and unbroken as a looking glass. Nothing there, except their clothes scattered on the bank and the hand sliding up his calf, no longer touching his skin but brushing over the hairs.

His throat thickened with anticipation, his cock beginning to stir. A nail scratched lightly at the tender skin at the inside of his knee, and he exhaled long and slow, dropping his head back against the grass. He slid his hand out from underneath his head, feeling the urge to reach out for her, to confirm for himself that she was something more than a figment of his imagination. Instead he held back, clenching his hands into fists. He couldn’t even be certain why he held back, only that there seemed something unreal about this encounter; it had the hazy yet pin-sharp quality of a waking dream, and if he tried to touch her it might shatter the illusion. He never wanted this to end.

She shifted position, settling her body between his legs. He could feel her skin damp from her swim and smell the scent of the lavender soap twining around them both. Her hair must still be wet; water was trickling down the tender skin of his inner thigh, shockingly cold on his sun-warmed skin.

A breeze stirred the trees, and in the shaft of direct sunlight that illuminated them both, he could see her, like a river of molten light spilling over him, a shiver made flesh. And up that nail was rising, from the inside of his knee and along the back of his thigh, and she was leaning in, leaning closer, her breast pressed against his leg. His cock was rock hard now, the head twitching against his belly, straining for her touch.

He pressed his head a little harder against the grass, and arched his hips upwards, begging without words, because even to speak might be to break the illusion, and he still wasn’t convinced, since she hadn’t yet said a word either, that this wasn’t a dream.

Her tormenting touch found the crease between his thigh and his buttock and slid inwards, her arm circling around his thigh. He could feel the hard little nub of her nipple pressing into his leg, and from the way she was moving against him, her breath shallow, she was as aroused as he was. She cupped his balls lightly, the pads of her fingers pressing against the base of his erection.

He couldn’t stop himself from groaning, the sky and the trees hazing into a blur as he closed his eyes. His cock twitched upwards, seeking contact. She made a sound, a faint huff of frustration, and released him. He opened his mouth, about to break the silence and what now seemed like an enchantment, but before he could say a word she closed her hot wet mouth around the head of his cock.

He gasped, his fingers digging into the earth as if it were a bed sheet. Her tongue caressed the sensitive little flap of skin beneath the head, and slipped into the slit. A soft little moan of approval and delight sounded in the back of her throat as she took him deeper. To Brynjolf, fighting the urge to grind his hips up towards her, it felt like being fellated by sunlight.

She drew back, rolling her lips over the head of his erection, her hand wrapping around the base of his shaft and slip-sliding the silken skin over the solid core of his shaft.

She hovered there, her mouth barely touching him, close enough that he could feel her breath cooling on the saliva that dampened the head of his erection. He ached to reach down, grip her head and guide himself inside her mouth again.

Instead, he sat up, feeling for her in the hazy afternoon light. He still half-expected to find nothing there at all, but then his hand brushed against her waist and the underside of her dangling breast. He found her nipple, teased it with his knuckle until he felt it stiffen. Then her hand closed around his wrist, and she drew his hand down, guiding it between her thighs.

His first two fingers slid into the hot warm heart of her, and he groaned, because she was already wet and slick to the touch.

He twisted his fingers in slow circles, and leaned forward to draw her nipple into his mouth, teasing it with his teeth, his tongue, his lips, while he listened to her breath catch in her chest. Her skin tasted clean and sharp and bright, and he sucked on her nipple, rolling his tongue about it while she reached up and knotted her fingers in his hair.

Stolen of sight, he explored her through touch, taste and sound, struck once more by how unreal the situation seemed, as though they were two spirits communing. Being invisible seemed to make his sense of touch that much more powerful, heightening the pleasure so that every caress seemed exquisite.

With his fingers hooked inside her, he used the knuckle of his thumb to rub against the little nub at the front of her cleft, guided by the hitch in her breathing and the movement of her hips. Her grip on his hair tightened, hard enough to hurt.

And that was too much for him. Screw breaking the illusion: he _wanted_ her.

She gave a quiet gasp of protest when he pulled his hand free, but when he put his hands on her waist, she moved to straddle him, her hands resting loosely on his hips. His hand slid around the tight curve of her backside, dipping for a moment into the cleft of her arse, before he pulled her hard towards him and sheathed his cock smoothly inside her.

She was hot and wet and much tighter than he’d expected, muscles tightening around his shaft. Her teeth nipped at his skin as she buried her face in his throat, letting him set the rhythm, his hands on her hips.

At first, he fought to keep the pace slow. He wanted to draw it out, to stop her from grinding herself to a frantic climax against his pubic bone, to make her come at his leisure, and then to make her come again, to force her – in this strange liminal world of scattered light and translucent shadows – to be the first to break and speak, to beg him to fuck her.

He spread his hands across her backside and rose up to his knees, shifting position so she was beneath him, one leg wrapped around his back, while he held the other down. He reached down to feel the place where he was entering her, and adjusted his position so that with every slow, steady stroke he ground the shaft of his erection against her clitoris.

Each stroke was like plunging into oiled silk, and he dropped his head to the shivering air beneath him, bringing lips to skin, to the underside of her breast, damp with perspiration. Her hips twitched up to meet his thrusts, her hands clawing at his buttocks, as she urged him on without words. Not quite begging, not yet, but he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. His control was starting to slip, because her breathing was starting to quicken, and the air beneath him seemed to shiver with every thrust. She was losing control, and still she hadn’t uttered a word, no ‘Bryn’ or ‘Fuck’ or ‘Oh gods yes’: just a breathy sigh with every thrust, and jerky little spasmodic movements of the hips that he couldn’t see, but could damned well feel.

 _Like fucking the earth itself,_ he thought distractedly, remembering the old stories about the creation of Sancre Tor. Not that they held much meaning to him, but they would to her. To Fen those stories would be sacred.

Without warning, she tightened the leg wrapped around his back, the movement stretching her channel around his shaft. The shift in sensation was very nearly enough to drive him right over the edge, and his movements juddered. Suddenly, without warning, she was coming, bucking beneath him with a throaty wordless cry, arching her back.

He went still and kissed her tenderly, letting her recover. The kiss was clumsy at first since he was essentially kissing the air, but her tongue slipped into his mouth and he soon got the knack, kissing her gently as the fluttering of her muscles around his shaft subsided.

She wrapped her arms around him, running her hands along his spine and over the planes of his back. Her legs hooked around his, the invitation clear.

He began then to fuck her in earnest, the hope of making her come like this a second time a distant dream; he was too close, the need to spill his seed too urgent, and he came with a hard shudder, his teeth clashing against hers in the sudden spasm of pleasure.

Her fingers tousled in his hair. He grinned as he slipped free of her, felt her tense, then chuckle softly, as he began to kiss his way slowly down her body, exploring her with his mouth. As he fastened his lips around her nipple and sucked on it hard, he knew from her gasp of mingled pleasure and pain that she was ready to come again.

He continued down, and as her legs fell open her scent and his mingled in a way that sent another wave of heat surging through him. Nuzzling at her inner thigh, he realised his sticky cock was already beginning to harden again. It stabbed urgently into the ground as he plunged his fingers inside her, and brought his mouth down to taste her, his fingers working away at the sensitive spot on the inside of her wall and his tongue flicking at the nub at the front of her cleft, as he brought her back to a second wordless climax.

iii

 

“ _Well_...” Fennec was still gasping, breath shallow, as he settled down beside her. “And still, somehow, even after all that, we’re both still invisible.”

“Aye.” He was as breathless as she was, dizzy with pleasure and arousal. He could still taste her on his lips. He was semi-erect, and the warmth and malleability of the body pressed against him wasn’t exactly helping in that regard. He was beginning to suspect that temporary paralysis and invisibility weren’t the only effects the potion bestowed. He really didn’t want to think too hard about what the alchemist was planning to use it for. “I’ve never known a potion like it.”

“I told you.” She let out a sigh, and rested her head on his shoulder. “That poor dead bastard. If he’d only stopped to ask who the fuck we were before trying to kill us, he’d probably be alive right now. I mean, granted, we’d probably have stolen all his stuff, but _still_...”

A dragon turned in sweeping circles against the sky, passing so close overhead the wind stirred their hair. Fen pressed her face into his neck, her breath warm against his skin. He watched the dragon, marvelling at how beautiful it was, its scales gleaming like beaten copper chased with gold. It might be a lumbering monster on land, but in the sky it was elegant and graceful. Somehow it seemed easier to appreciate that when the beast wasn’t trying to roast or freeze them to death. And then it was gone, vanishing into the mountains to the south.

“You know I’m sorry, right?” Fen spoke so softly he might have been able to imagine she’d never spoken at all.

“Sorry for what?” But he already knew. He’d had his suspicions that this was coming. Somehow it was easier to let the secrets come spilling out when you couldn’t see the other person.

“For killing Mercer. I know you were friends for a long time.” She drew a breath. He waited. “You need to know, Bryn, if I could have spared him, I would have. I wanted to. He wouldn’t let me.”

“None of us had any choice. After what Mercer did, stealing from the guild, he deserved everything he got.” But he couldn’t seem to summon up the appropriate level of venom that Mercer ought to have deserved. Instead of vengeful, he sounded weary, and Fen was sitting up, touching his chest as if seeking to prove to herself that he was still there.

“The guild,” she repeated, and Brynjolf frowned.

“Aye, it’s–”

“No. You said the guild and not Nocturnal.” She said this more sharply, as though seeking to confirm something she already suspected. “Even now, you and me and Karliah with our secret guild within a guild, and it’s not the Sepulcher you’re thinking of.”

“I’ve been a thief longer than I’ve been a Nightingale.”

“Yeah,” she said, and even though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was grinning. He could hear it in her voice. “Funny thing, so have I.”

“Fen…” Unease gnawed at his gut. “What have you done?”

“Aside from you? The list is long and varied. I’m not sure where to start...”

“The Skeleton Key,” he said, slowly, and one of the amorphous concerns he’d been nursing for a while began to coalesce in his gut. “You did take it back to the Sepulcher...”

“Of course I took it back to the Sepulcher. I wouldn’t be your guildmaster if I hadn’t, would I?”

“No,” he said. “No, of course not.”

“Although, admittedly,” she said, bringing her warm lips to his ear, “that doesn’t mean I left it there.”

 _Shor’s beard_.

A laugh escaped him, bubbling up unexpectedly, because of course, of _course_ , she’d have pulled this shit. “You’re mad, lass, you’re _insane_. Karliah is going to–”

“ _What_? What’s she going to do?”

“Remember what happened to Mercer.”

“Mercer? Mercer Frey who _I_ fucking killed, and without a scrap of help from Nocturnal except some swanky armour? Yeah, I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

He considered. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Perhaps it’s because I trust you.”

Brynjolf let out a hard bark of a laugh. “I doubt that. You’re no idiot, lass. You’re too sharp to trust an old rogue like me.”

She chuckled, and rested her head back on his shoulder. “There’s trust and there’s trust. You’ll stay loyal, long as you can see the profit in it, so all I have to do is make sure it’s in your interests to keep me breathing. But here’s something else to bear in mind, Bryn – do you really mean to spend eternity playing Nocturnal’s obedient guard-dog in the Sepulcher? Because I sure as fuck don’t.”

He tried to keep his voice serious and stern, which was borderline impossible since her hand was working its way down to his groin. “We all swore our allegiance to Nocturnal, Fennec. We make a solemn vow...”

“Well, what else are solemn vows for?” she said. “If not to be solemnly broken?”

He closed his eyes and slipped his hand beneath the back of his head. “This is the strangest pillow talk I’ve ever had.”

“Will you tell Karliah?”

There was no fear or anxiety in her voice, only curiosity. It was possible she was hiding it, but he didn’t believe that for a moment. He wondered how easily she’d kill him, if it came to that? He suspected she liked him better than she’d liked Mercer, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that would stop her from cutting his throat, not if she felt she had no choice.

“You’ve put me in a difficult position,” he said.

Except she hadn’t, not really. It might make things awkward with Karliah, no doubt, but he’d been travelling with Fennec for long enough to know how most of her enemies fared against her. He’d have to be a fool to move against her, and he wasn’t a fool.

She was waiting for him to answer.

He thought about the vow he’d made, the dangers inherent in betraying the Lady of Shadows. And then he remembered the tale Fennec had told him about what she’d found waiting for her in the Sepulcher, the endless empty darkness, the shadows thick as ink. He’d caught a glimpse of it himself when he’d stood on that circle of stone in the ceremonial chamber of Nightingale Hall; the light in that cavernous room played strange tricks on the eye, and for a moment it had seemed as though a dense liquid darkness had arisen from the depths of the chamber to surround the island on which he stood. It cast black reflections rippling across the vaulted ceiling as he’d made obeisance and sworn his soul away to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in. His dreams had taken a strange turn since that night.

“No,” he said quietly. “I won’t betray you, lass, I swear it on everything that’s precious to me.”

She rose up, feeling for his cheek. The sunlight caught her from behind, making her seem to glow from within. It made him think of dragonfire, made him wonder what she truly was, where she’d come from. And why her? Was it something in her blood, her breeding? Some streak of holiness in her soul? If so, it was well-hidden.

She pressed her lips to the corner of his, and he felt the flicker of her tongue against his mouth. He turned his head and met the kiss full on, fierce and hungry.

“And never,” she murmured when she pulled away, “was a vow more solemnly made.”


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

i

It had occurred to Brynjolf that Fennec might have been lying about the Skeleton Key, that she had in fact delivered it safely to the Twilight Sepulcher, but told him otherwise for inexplicable reasons of her own.

During the slow cart-ride north to Solitude, he’d asked her if he could see it, but he’d been somewhat distracted when she dropped to her knees between his legs and freed his cock from his pants. Not that he wasn’t appreciative, but he recognised an attempt to distract him when he saw – or, rather, didn’t see – one. She was slipping; he hadn’t quite been distracted enough to refrain from checking her pockets. A little clumsier than usual, true, but he felt that he’d acquitted himself well given the circumstances, disguising his roaming hands as caresses. Still, it had come to naught. If she was carrying the Skeleton Key on her person, she’d hidden it well.

Nor had he found it in her pack, so perhaps…

Wishful thinking. It was a comforting thought, but the truth was he didn’t really believe it. Stealing the Skeleton Key back was _exactly_ the sort of idiotic thing Fennec would do.

He could feel it coming, the change in their luck. It felt like a thunderhead gathering on the horizon, readying itself to piss all over them. He couldn’t tell what shape it would take or how bad it would be, but he found it was usually safer to err on the side of ‘we’re all fucking doomed’, especially when travelling in the company of the Dragonborn.

Once the cart arrived at Solitude, they’d cooled their heels for a while until the effects of the potion wore off, then paid Gulum-Ei a visit. Over a bowl of peppery beef stew and the finest Cyrodilic brandy Solitude’s black market could provide, they learned something of what had transpired in Solitude over the past week.

There had been a failed attempt on the Emperor’s life, Gulum-Ei told them, which had culminated in his double being poisoned with jarrin root, a nasty little herb from Stros M’Kai. The assassin had been captured and tortured or slain on the spot – the various tales were confused and conflicted, and no one seemed to know the truth, but the rumour was that the trap had been deliberately set by the Penitus Oculatus to bait the Dark Brotherhood into overextending themselves.

“That,” Fennec commented, “seems a little harsh on the double,” and Gulum-Ei had grinned at her.

“Maybe,” he’d said, “but it worked, or so the Penitus Oculatus is claiming, and the Brotherhood are running like whipped dogs.”

“Do you believe it?” Brynjolf asked Fennec later.

They were sitting on a parapet overlooking the courtyard of the Bard’s College, knocking back mead and watching a straw effigy of some High King or other burn – there’d been some speechifying which Brynjolf hadn’t paid much attention to.

“Do you?”

Brynjolf gave her a one-sided humourless grin, eyes hard. “Not for one sweet second, lass.”

She nodded. “I know. I don’t believe it either.”

“How do you destroy a void?” he wondered aloud.

“Not our problem.” Fennec took a swallow of mead, and made a faint sound of disgust in the back of her throat. “You know, Mercer was right about one thing. Black-Briar mead _is_ swill.”

Music was playing, a low drumbeat like a heart. The smell of smoke and roasting meat rose up about them, while luna moths danced bright against the moon, a courtship as inevitably doomed to failure as Vipir’s attempts at seducing Sapphire. The ale and spiced wine had been flowing for a while, and the courtyard below was filled with soft laughter and dancing and couples disappearing into dark corners.

Brynjolf was a little drunk. He’d never been the sort of thief who went gambolling about on rooftops, and didn’t have much of a head for heights, although he was inclined to agree with Fennec that thieves weren’t meant to cower in the sewers like rats and goblins or whatever the Skyrim equivalent was. At least up here the air was fresh, even if when the wind changed, sweeping down from the endless wastes of frozen sea to the north, it was so sharp and clean and cold it almost hurt to breathe. In any case, the sewers in Solitude weren’t large enough for habitation, consisting of little more than a series of tunnels and sluices designed to funnel waste away into the Sea of Ghosts. There were tombs too, or so he’d heard, but thieves tended to be superstitious, and given Solitude’s history it was generally agreed it was probably better not to go poking too closely around the dead.

‘Not our problem’ was all well and good, Brynjolf was thinking, but what she was forgetting, or neglecting to admit, was that when you’re the Dragonborn – or travelling with the Dragonborn – it’s _always_ your problem.

 

ii

 

The Katariah was a fine three-masted galleon, moored in an inlet in the bay of Solitude beneath the towering arch of stone on which Solitude, the jewel of Skyrim, stood. The setting sun behind the arch caught the roof of the Blue Palace, making it shimmer and sparkle like the glinting sapphire eye of a vast stone god. The gentle waves lapped against the hull of the ship, and the sailors on the spotless deck were busy at work while a handful of hard-eyed men kept watch. They seemed calm but watchful, alert but unconcerned, and it was easy to slip past them.

The first sign that something had gone awry was a corpse. One of the sailors, his throat slit and his shirt soaked black with blood, the body dragged behind a couple of barrels in a half-arsed attempt to hide the body. Brynjolf saw the shirt dimple where an unseen hand pressed into it, and he heard Fen’s breathing quicken, before she straightened up, her arm brushing against his. It was probably just his imagination that he could feel the fury radiating off her in waves. “Lass–”

“We go on,” she said before he could say another word. “And we do what we came here to do.”

Unease gnawed at Brynjolf’s gut, There was a horrible sense of inevitability about events, and he was entirely unsurprised to find more of the dead waiting for them deeper in the ship. Gradually the attempts to hide the bodies grew ever more desultory until eventually the corpses, both sailors and those of the Penitus Oculatus, were strewn everywhere. It was a slaughterhouse and a very recent one. This deep in the ship’s bowels it reeked of the metallic tang of blood, but another scent underlaid it, like the way the air smelled after a storm, clean and sweet and cold. Brynjolf recognised it as the after-scent of magic, felt it as a prickling sensation beneath his skin, like goosebumps turned inwards.

Outside the ornately carved double doors that led to the Emperor’s quarters, an agent of the Penitus Oculatus was slumped on the ground, clutching at his belly. His skin was white and waxy, and Brynjolf knew with a glance that the poor sod was beyond saving. The whites of his eyes showed when Fen knelt beside him, and the agent made a weak attempt to crawl away, bloodied hands scrabbling weakly against the floorboards until Fen hushed him.

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “It’s all right.” Her voice was soft, gentle as a mother’s, but instead of soothing the agent, it broke something inside him, reducing him to a frightened child. Half-begging, half-weeping, and utterly terrified of death, he was still young enough to think of himself as essentially immortal. Despite his training, despite his fancy armour, he’d never really considered that death might be coming for him. That was a lesson Brynjolf had learned young.

The agent grabbed at her, forced his words out through slackening lips, bubbles of blood popping at the corner of his mouth: “...the Emperor,” he was saying, “...oh gods, the Emperor...”

From inside the chambers, they heard a thump, followed by a muffled cry. The young man jolted and began to claw at her arm in earnest. “Please, you have to save him, _please_...”

“Shh.”

Brynjolf saw the healing potion she shoved into the young man’s hands. He could have told her it was useless. The damage done to this man had gone far beyond anything a healing potion could fix. Even the strongest of Restoration practitioners would have been hard pressed to do anything other than ease his final moments, and he suspected that the man lacked even the strength to uncork the bottle. It might have been a truer act of kindness to put a blade through his ribs and have done, but he kept silent. He heard the rustle of her clothing as she stood up, the silk-soft whisper as she drew her dagger.

“You sure you want to do this?” she asked, her voice grim.

“Your choice, lass,” he said. “No matter what, I’ve got your back.”

He’d been expecting something for a while. Even if he’d had no idea what form that something might take, he’d done his best to prepare himself, so what they found in Emperor Titus Mede’s opulent chambers didn’t exactly take him by surprise: the cowled assassin in the familiar red and black armour, with eyes that held the empty flat deadness that Brynjolf associated with the Brotherhood. He was turning to face the door with the Emperor clutched close like a shield, and must have been expecting a fresh wave of the Emperor’s guard to come bursting through the door. His eyes narrowed, sweeping the room, but he seemed unperturbed by the lack of visitors. He wielded an ugly hooked dagger the likes of which Brynjolf had never seen before, pressed against the Emperor’s throat. It looked old.

Bryn glanced around for Fen, but the room was lit by the soft golden light from several lanterns, and it was far too dark to see the telltale flicker of movement.

“Well, Sire,” the assassin said, pressing his cheek against Mede’s, “it seems we have company.” His voice was cultured, carrying the lilting accent of High Rock. Brynjolf tagged him as nobility at once, the sort of voice that had he heard it in a tavern would have led him to note the speaker as a potential mark. At least up until the moment he saw the eyes, because one look at those and he would have immediately and very definitely scratched that possibility off his list: whatever had happened between this assassin and the Penitus Oculatus, whatever the truth behind Gulum-Ei’s distorted rumours, it had shoved this bastard right over the edge. He was crazy as Pelagius now.

“Rude, though,” the assassin continued, “not to announce themselves.”

The Emperor closed his eyes in despair.

Brynolf shifted his grip on his dagger, wishing he knew where Fennec was. Circling around to get behind the assassin would have been his first guess, so no doubt that was exactly where she _wasn’t_.

“Unless this is another trap,” the assassin mused, eyes widening in a look of mock-surprise that made Brynjolf itch to punch him, “and another double?” Mede gasped in pain as the blade of the dagger bit deeper into his throat. “Frankly, Sire, I’m getting a little tired of being manipulated–”

“Let him go,” Brynjolf said, “Nice and easy, lad, and we can all get out of this in one piece.”

The assassin lifted his head, gaze darting unerringly to the spot where Brynjolf was standing. Or rather, _had_ been standing, since he’d already moved, swiftly and silently using the thick rug to conceal the sound of his movements.

The assassin pointed his blade at where he believed Brynjolf to be. It left a sickly feeling in the air, that blade; it seemed to hunger. “Have we been introduced?” the assassin asked. “Your voice sounds familiar.”

“I’ve had dealings with the Brotherhood in the past,” Brynjolf said flatly, and at the sound of his voice the assassin jerked his head around, pinpointing his location.

“With that bitch Astrid?”

“Amongst others.”

He moved again, risking the rug once more, although he knew the assassin was expecting him to do exactly that and was tracking his movements; the son-of-a-bitch was all but sniffing the air.

The prickle of magic being readied itched at him and he braced himself. “I’m not a man you want as an enemy,” he said.

“What a remarkable coincidence,” the assassin replied. “Neither am I.”

Brynjolf had been expecting Destruction magic, a surging stream of flames or ice or crackling lightning. Instead it was worse. The assassin drew his blade sharply across Mede’s throat, and in one smooth movement, as the Emperor crumpled, he twisted his off-hand, which flared incandescent with a rhythmically pulsing indigo light. And that rhythm was a little too familiar. The moment the assassin’s head snapped towards him, Brynjolf realised why it felt so familiar: it was pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He’d been seen.

_Shit._

Kicking Mede aside, the assassin snatched up a jewelled brandy decanter from the desk and flung it at Brynjolf, came at him while he was caught off-balance. Brynjolf parried the dagger, catching the blade on the hilt of his own. He caught the assassin’s arm with his other hand, meaning to jerk it down and drive his elbow back into the assassin’s face, but another rushing surge of magic alerted him to a movement of the assassin’s free hand.

The brandy decanter, snatched up from the ground with a telekinesis spell, smashed into the base of his skull.

Dizzied, he staggered, a starburst of pain inside his skull. The assassin wrenched his dagger-hand free, and he knew there was no way he’d be able to parry the strike in time.

The ugly hooked blade stopped dead mid-air, with the grating squeal of metal on metal that set his teeth on edge.

Fennec. _Finally_.

Something flickered in the assassin’s eyes other than madness, an expression of faint startlement, and in that frozen moment Brynjolf realised that the assassin had been right – they _had_ met before. He recognised the greying brows, the ugly little scar peeking above the mask – this was the same piece of shit that had visited the Cistern to speak to Delvin Mallory, and he made a mental note to speak to Delvin about this. If that sly bastard knew something that he hadn’t shared with the guild, Brynjolf and he were going to have words.

Fennec was drawing a breath to Shout, and he didn’t have time to get out of the way. This, he thought, in the instant before the equivalent of a sledgehammer slammed into his chest, was going to hurt.

**FUS RO DAH**

He’d caught the edge of a Shout before, and that had been bad enough, but now he almost got the full brunt of it, and it was like having a ton of bricks being dropped on him from a great height. Enough to slam the breath from his lungs, and send him tumbling, end over end, to slam against the desk and fall to a crumpled heap. His chest felt as though he’d been pressed. He gasped to draw breath into his battered lungs as he righted himself. He couldn’t see the assassin, and for a moment in his dazed state he thought that the Shout had been strong enough to disintegrate him. Then he heard a mad little giggle from the other end of the cabin, near where the Emperor was bleeding out.

The assassin staggered to his feet, jerking the mask down. He drew the back of his hand across his mouth with another broken giggle. “The Dragonborn, I presume? I’d heard rumours, whisperings from the Night Mother, but I hadn’t really believed...” With a flourish, he bowed so deeply he looked about to topple over. “So that’s a Shout, is it? Goodness me, how thrilling. I wish...” He drew a ragged breath, spat out a mouthful of blood, “I wish we could have met under better circumstances...” And then his hand whipped up, his fingers clenching into a fist, and Fennec made a frantic choking noise.

His strength wavering, Brynjolf rose to his knees, pain pulsing at the back of his skull with every movement. There was a hot stickiness at his neck. He grabbed the nearest weapon he could find, the brandy decanter with its jagged edge of broken crystal, and hauled himself to his feet. With Fennec making frantic strangled sounds behind him, he drove the broken neck of the decanter up into the underside of the assassin’s jaw and twisted. Instantly, a wave of pent-up magic surged outward as the spell released, and Fennec gasped, sucking air gratefully into her lungs. The assassin flailed at him, eyes bulging. Brynjolf jerked the decanter free and smashed it over the assassin’s head. He crumpled, broken and bleeding and insensible.

“Bryn...” Fennec’s voice was hoarse and urgent as she shoved past him.

He looked around and saw the Emperor weakly dragging himself into a sitting position. Brynjolf had seen portraits of his Emperor before, but the sight of him in the flesh took him aback. Even allowing for the less-than-ideal circumstances, Titus Mede looked exhausted, shrunken in his rich jewelled-trimmed robes of silk and velvet, as though the long years of a reign beset by problems had broken him. The blood didn't help.

“Lie still, now, Sire,” Fennec said. “We’re loyal citizens of the Empire.”

Brynjolf snorted.

“ _Listen to me._ ” Weak though he was, Mede’s voice was urgent, and he was clearly a man who was used to being obeyed. He reached out and gripped the air – Fennec’s forearm, Bryn assumed. Mede drew her close, whispering, his voice too low for Brynjolf to hear. He could hear Fennec though, her shallow breathing rasping out of her abused throat. Then Mede coughed and fell back, the last of his strength gone. “They’re coming,” he said, and he seemed a broken man once more.

The assassin exhaled for the last time, a long rattling breath. His blood pooled on the floorboards, ruining a rug that had probably cost the same as the ship itself. Distracted by the dying assassin, Brynjolf was too slow to realise what was happening.

He heard Fennec shift position, and he thought for an instant that she was pulling a healing potion from her pack, because the Emperor’s face relaxed into a look of relief and gratitude.

Not a healing potion. Quite the opposite in fact.

It was as if she’d gripped the sides of the Emperor’s robes and yanked. The fabric split open in a gash above the heart, and still Brynjolf didn’t grasp what had happened until the blood began to blossom up and spread in shining petals across the fine silk.

And yes, okay, he’d known Fennec didn’t deal well with authority, but this was ridiculous.

It was so ludicrous, he almost wanted to laugh. Instead he took a step towards the body of his dying Emperor. “Lass...” He sought for words, but could think of nothing except a bewildered, “What have you _done?_ ”

Boots hammered in the corridor outside, the remaining members of the Emperor’s guard shouting to each other.

“Lass–”

She grabbed his arm, hauling him to the other door of the cabin. “Not really the time, Bryn.” Her voice was raw and hoarse, but otherwise calm, and he felt a rush of sudden fury at her. The door to the balcony was locked of course, and as he sagged against the wall, he felt the clenching tug in his guts he now recognised as the presence of the Skeleton Key. He’d felt that sensation before on a job with Mercer before he’d understood what it meant, and again with Fennec and Karliah after Irkngthand once Mercer was dead. So that was one question answered: there was one thing she hadn’t lied to him about at least.

 _Godsdamn you_ , he thought.

The lock yielded to Fennec’s persuasion, and they burst out onto the balcony and into the cooler night air as the main doors were thrown open. Before the door closed, Brynjolf caught a glimpse of an agent of the Penitus Oculatus with his forearms wreathed with crackling actinic light that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Fennec shoved him forward, and he hooked one leg over the side and stared for a moment at the water. It looked black as shadows.

“You’re going to owe me for this, lass,” he muttered, and heard the splash as she hit the water and knew she hadn’t heard him. He bit back a curse, swung his other leg over, not at all certain he was going to be able to swim in his battered state.

He offered up a prayer to the Lady of Shadows – not that she was going to be looking on him too fondly these days, or ever again, thanks to Fennec – and let himself drop.

 

iii

 

Brynjolf had known when he threw his lot in with the Nightingales that his life would change irrevocably, and Karliah had been sparse with the details: there was no way he could have been certain what he was signing up for, but he’d judged the reward worth the risk. Same as he’d done when he first met Fennec. He should have known she was trouble. He should have _known_...

They swam across the bay to the far shore, torches flitting like fireflies on the deck of the ship. The distant cries of the Emperor’s elite guard echoed across the lake as they found their hidden stash of gear, and hiked inland in silence until they judged it safe to make camp deep in the Hjaalmarch marshes. By then it was almost dawn, the lightening sky smeared with tattered shreds of cloud, but it still would have been wise to snatch a few hours of sleep before morning took hold. At least here where the land was wet and marshy it was easy to track her movements. He wouldn’t have put it past Fennec to melt into the wilderness, vanishing without a word to him about where she was going.

They made camp on a small island of dryish land, near a handful of standing stones of meteoric iron. Or rather, Brynjolf made camp, because by the time he was finished, Fennec had gone. He swore softly, but when he called her name, she responded with a low whistle.

He followed the whistle to the edge of the island, near a blackened twisting length of bogwood, which seemed to be clawing its way up the bank. “I suppose,” she said, “you’ve got some questions.”

He hunkered down beside the space where she was sitting. “What did Mede say to you that made you think you had to kill him?”

“It wasn’t like that. He asked me to do it.”

He considered this for a moment, his anger tempered by the sorrow in her voice “Why?” he demanded, his voice hard.

“I’ve no fucking clue. But if I had to guess… I think Mede might have set it all up himself.”

“You’re suggesting the Emperor ordered his own assassination? That’s madness.”

She exhaled in agreement, a short hard exhalation of air. “I should have said _no_. I should have told him to go fuck himself. I just… Bryn, I just murdered our fucking _Emperor._ ”

And to think he’d started out journeying with her in the hopes that he could induce calmer heads to prevail and prevent her and Maven from butchering each other.

He snorted a bitter laugh, pinched the bridge of his nose, and thought.

The distress in her voice was real enough, he would have laid good coin on that. He thought about the urgency in Titus Mede’s voice, the expression of relief he’d worn in the instant before she’d killed him. Because he’d thought himself saved, or because she’d agreed to finish the job the assassin started?

She make a sound of disgust. “If I’d just said ‘no’...”

“Why didn’t you?” And then, at her long drawn-in breath, he felt for her shoulder, and brought his mouth close to her ear. She was shivering, he realised, although the air was mild enough. It was one thing to kill in self-defence, another thing entirely to murder in cold blood. He hadn’t himself, but he’d ordered the occasional Dark Brotherhood contract when it was deemed necessary. For the good of the guild. Not something he was proud of. He squeezed her shoulder, gave her a gentle shake. “I’m not blaming you, Fen.”

“No, I know, I… I don’t...” She hesitated. “I felt like it was meant. Like _I_ was meant to be the one who killed him. I wasn’t going to do it, except then I closed my hand around the hilt of the dagger and it was like I couldn’t do anything else. And there was something about his _voice_ … he spoke and all I could think of was home.”

“By home you mean...”

“Cyrodiil.” She stirred, and even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew she was looking up at him. “Do you believe me?”

He didn’t hesitate, although maybe he should have done. He felt no particular allegiance to either the Emperor or to Ulfric Stormcloak, or to whoever sat on the Ruby Throne, but he’d seen the way Titus Mede’s hand had clamped around Fen’s arm, and the expression on his face as he’d whispered urgently into what appeared to be thin air. He believed her.

“Yes.”

Despite the creeping unease that itched at the back of his neck, he held himself still as she cupped his cheek with her rough calloused palm. Her fingers traced his lips, and he parted them, touched his tongue to the pad of her fingers and drew them into his mouth. She gave a sharp intake of breath as he ran his tongue down between her fingers to the knuckle.

In the tight confines of the bedroll by the warmth of the meagre peat fire, he fucked her slowly from behind, a rhythmic rocking movement that was gentler than their previous encounters and more solemn. He kissed the nape of her neck, one hand on her breast, the other reaching down between her legs to tangle in her pubic hair and feel the place where his cock slid in and out of her.

Partway through the illusion broke and she shivered back into visibility beside him, ripples of light spiralling out across the skin of her back like a pebble tossed into the surface of a smooth lake. He took in the curves of her back, the shadows of her ribs, and the faint silvery glow that lingered on her skin and for a moment it was like fucking a spirit, something from another time, another world, as if there truly was something godlike about her. And then she twisted back to kiss him, the movements of her hips growing more urgent until she came, arching back against him with a half-stifled “Oh gods, Bryn. _Fuck!_ ” that made him grin, because it was about damn time _._

It took his own invisibility a little while to wear off, but he knew when it did because Fennec stirred in the bedroll beside him. He lifted his hand and studied its back, the bruised knuckles and the veins visible beneath his skin. Then he let it drop again, after casting a cautious glance around the swamp for frostbite spiders or trolls or whatever else might be lurking in the Hjaalmarch countryside with the sole intention of fucking them over.

“Maybe it’s time you returned to Riften,” Fennec said when he risked settling back down.

Brynjolf closed his eyes, the knot of regret tightening. “And here I thought we made such an excellent team,” he said, keeping his voice light.

“Oh come on, Bryn. You’ve got to admit matters have changed just the tiniest bit… If you don’t want to travel with me after what happened...”

“What gave you that idea? You need me, lass, and I’ve not enjoyed myself so much in decades.”

She gave him a dubious look. “You’re a damn fine liar, Bryn.”

“A necessary skill in my line of work.” He paused. “Look, lass, if you need me in Riften and you have work that’s better accomplished alone, I’ll go...” He waited and her silence was all the answer he needed. “Where are you going to go?”

She hesitated again, before reluctantly saying, “Whiterun.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

Slowly she turned her head towards him. Her eyes were dark and sad. “A dying man’s last wish.”

Brynjolf sighed. “Are you sure this is wise?”

“Gods, no. But I think it’s right.”

“Then I’ll come with you. If you want me to. But if you want me to stay I’ll stay.” He kissed her. “It’s your choice, lass. No matter what, I’ve got your back.”

They fell silent. “I could have joined the Brotherhood, you know,” Fennec said after a while. “I thought about it once, a long time ago.”

He believed it. He could picture her wearing the Dark Brotherhood armour, faded black and shining wet scarlet. Same as he could see her in well-creased leather guild armour, or dragonscale, or the Skyforged wolf armour that the Companions wore. Brynjolf couldn’t imagine living anything other than the life of a thief, but she was different. Strange, how she had a way of fitting in wherever she went, as if she was malleable in a way that wasn’t true of anyone else he’d ever met, not even Mercer.

He’d been afraid their luck would change, and it had – just not in the way he might have predicted. He’d been expecting jail cells or the sharp end of a blade, and instead he’d gotten… what? A strange sense of something being set in motion, like a cart that had just rolling downhill, slow at first but quickly picking up momentum. It made him wary, and he was not a man who was easily intimidated.

Who was she, he wondered. Where had she come from? And out of the thousand and one shadows her life seemed to cast which one was real?

She’d settled with her face against his neck, her breath warm on his skin. Unable to see her face, Brynjolf found he was suddenly struggling to remember what she looked like, the colour of her hair, for instance, or whether her eyes were hazel or green or a bright shining blue.

A funny thing, this: he couldn’t seem to recall.


End file.
